


Eternity In An Hour

by YdrittE



Series: Zeitgeister [1]
Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ghosts, Supernatural Elements, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24388897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YdrittE/pseuds/YdrittE
Summary: There is a reason why in the centre of the Ancients’ Temple there is a clock, and there is a reason why its hands can move either direction.
Series: Zeitgeister [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1780246
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Eternity In An Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Oh heck they changed the fandom tags while I wasn't looking >>
> 
> Kinda spoilers for both certain aspects of the FFVII Remake and The Haunting of Hill House (2018), the latter of which I basically lifted the underlying concept for this fic from. It’s a wonderful show that I recommend wholeheartedly if you’ve got the nerve for spooky shit and intense family drama. And also ghosts. Ghosts everywhere.

There is a reason why in the centre of the Ancients’ Temple there is a clock, and there is a reason why its hands can move either direction. The reason is not inherently obvious to most that set foot in there, and most that pass by that particular room only ever see the clock hands ticking forward.

She remembers when she first stood in that room, and has an inkling of when she will first stand in that room. She looked and looks and will look down into the dark below the clock, wondering what lay below in absolute certainty that there is a floor and a monster and a treasure and a way back up. She finds the clock most curious, the way the hands are in all positions at once and form a dozen paths to tread. She treads them, one by one simultaneously.

Her footsteps were quiet back then, trying not to disturb the ones that rest in this place, the ones soon to join the ghosts of the past. For a lesser creature the path forward would be difficult to find. For her, and those who built this place, it is child’s play.

-

The first time the drowning man appears, Sephiroth is five years old and supposed to be sleeping. He doesn’t remember what it was that caused him to open his eyes – certainly not a noise, a noise he would recall. A noise would have made sense.

The shadowy figure at the foot of his bed is simply _there_ without warning, drip-dropping red-green water onto the concrete floor and making an awful gurgling noise in the back of its throat as if desperately trying to get in air. And failing.

Its eyes are sunken deep into its skull, empty-looking sockets holding Sephiroth’s gaze for a few moments before the shock wears off and Sephiroth screams, loudly, piercingly, until lab assistants come running in fear he’s hurt himself, the shadow man joining him with its own rasping, agonised cry that trails off into wet, choked-off coughs. The figure disappears at some point between blinks, and Sephiroth finds himself having trouble explaining exactly _why_ he woke everybody up. The words that tumble out of his mouth sound childish and illogical even to him, much more so to his caretakers who exchange exasperated and vaguely amused looks and promise they’ll give him something with his dinner tomorrow to help him sleep better.

The concrete floor is spotless and dry, no matter how many times he runs his fingers over the place where the figure stood.

-

The fifth time the drowning man appears, Sephiroth is twelve years old and in enemy territory. He wasn’t sleeping. He was fighting, cutting down soldiers twice or three times his own age, and then there it was, standing motionless, illuminated by a fireball he threw. The flash of light lasts only a second. But it is long enough to see its face.

Sephiroth freezes.

The face staring back at him, the Mako and blood (red-green water, he understands in hindsight) running from its eyes and nose and mouth and ears, drowning it without it ever dying. The face is familiar. Deep in his chest something contracts, cuts off his air–

And then the shadow disappears, and time speeds up again, and Sephiroth brings his sword up just in time to block an incoming attack, even though his lungs burn and his heart races far too fast. He has no chance to wonder what it means; he has a war to fight, and an army to slaughter.

He doesn’t sleep that night.

-

The thirteenth time the drowning man appears, Sephiroth is twenty years old and thought he had finally left that spectre of his troubled childhood behind. Yet there it is, once again standing at the foot of his bed (a different bed, a different room, but still the same spot) to stare at him. He holds its gaze, his lips pressed together to keep himself quiet. It will go away soon, he tells himself, it always does, just don’t make a sound and don’t move a muscle.

It is bathed in shadow, but he knows what it looks like, has known for a long time now. It has become clear as the years went by, until there was no mistaking it anymore for anything but what it was. Glimpses of the wound nearly splitting it in half, of the burning eyes reflecting his own, of the ruin it had made of its own body.

If he just runs his hand over the patch of carpet where it stood long enough, one day he’ll find it soaked in blood and Mako. He’s sure of it.

-

The last time the drowning man appears, Sephiroth is teetering. There is an abyss beneath him and steel above him, and a single path consisting of a metal tube that leads him to where he needs to be. It waits for him at the end of the path, framed by the strange winged sculpture, drip-dropping Mako and blood, and when he steps up to greet it, the stains on the floor stay right where they are.

He tears away the effigy to gaze at the Goddess, meets her for the first and second and third and thousandth time, transfixed as she stares back at him. She hums inside his head, too quiet to make out the words exactly, muted by the glass between them. He runs his hand over it.

And then there is pain, and blood, and the glass is _cracked_ in front of him. Somebody is talking at the edge of his senses. The blade twists inside his guts and Sephiroth shudders, tastes blood in the back of his throat. He meets _her_ eyes, unnerved to find her still smiling.

An eternity passes before whoever snuck up on him finally takes pity (if it was meant to be pity, he can’t quite tell) and pulls free the sword, lets Sephiroth slump against the glass. Footsteps recede while he coughs, gags, tries to free his windpipe of the blood that just keeps coming. The voice inside his head is louder now, clearer, murmurs soothing encouragement.

_Rain_ , she hums, reaches out to pull his consciousness towards her, urges his dying body to follow as he struggles to get back to his feet. _Time is rain. No need to be afraid._

The glass rips into his flesh, a minor inconvenience compared to the agony that is his chest. She raises a hand and smiles, and touches his cheek. And his world shatters.

-

_Time is rain_ , she tells him, holds him steady in the middle of the clockface she is standing on, will always be standing on. _Time is rain. Just as you’ve always known. You see the paths now, do you not?_

His mind is still reeling, trying to comprehend and failing, yet he takes up the blade and takes a step and cuts all the same. He stumbles towards the exit with her cradled to his bleeding, caved-in chest where his heart is beating rabbit-quick. The rhythm is failing, and they both know it. He does not have much longer. He has forever instead.

It does not matter that he falls, does not matter that he fails. It has never mattered, will never matter. A thousand paths in front of them, and all lead to victory in the end.

-

The raw Mako burns, forces its way down his throat and mixes with the blood to fill his lungs and drown him. He cannot help the convulsions, the way he desperately tries to kick water and reach the surface, even though he knows it’s pointless. His body screams, for oxygen, for relief, for life, but Sephiroth has no way to give it any of that. Instead, he closes his eyes.

-

He opens them again at the top of the reactor shaft, with his back to the tank and the sculpture, and himself in front of him, looking so tired and so angry and so lost.

He opens them again in his apartment back in Midgar, staring at himself in silence for a second, for an eternity, two foes on equal footing.

He opens them again on a battlefield to the blinding light of a fireball showing him his own much younger face, the shocked expression as he recognised himself back them.

He opens them again in his old bedroom in the labs, locks eyes with the child, and when the child screams, shrill and piercing and afraid and _alive_ , Sephiroth opens his mouth and screams along with him as he finally, finally understands the horror and the glory of it all.

He opens his eyes and does not die and sees the thousand paths and the clock hands going backwards.

And steps out into the rain.

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Summary: Jenova and the Cetra both understand time differently than normal people and Sephiroth gets in on the shenanigans when he dies and then comes back. Please go watch The Haunting of Hill House for more information on non-linearity.


End file.
